The Lack of Primary Care Physicians versus Egalitarianism

Class inequality makes us live sicker and die earlier than we ought.

This life expectancy plot is from an article about why there are so few primary care physicians in the United States now.

Read the article containing the above text and plot here.

Class inequality makes us live sicker and die earlier than we ought. Read the enormous amount of scientific journal article evidence for this assertion here. One way this general problem manifests today is the severe lack of primary care physicians, which is making health care in the United States sub-optimal, as the author of the above-linked article describes in detail.

The medically very harmful shortage of primary care doctors is a result of the class inequality of our society. Physicians are lured by very high salaries to work for Big Pharma, Big Insurance or Big Hospital where they don’t actually provide medical care to the have-nots. Otherwise, physicians, especially the crucially needed (for reasons explained in the above article) primary care physicians, who want to provide medical care to the have-nots, must put up with being overworked to early burnout with low pay. This is why, as the above-linked article shows, more and more physicians are leaving, or deciding not even to enter, the job of caring for patients.

In an egalitarian society, the economy is based on the principle, “From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to need or reasonable desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need.” Like everybody else, physicians would be expected to contribute REASONABLY (i.e., not be overworked to early burnout) and in return would have—for free—what they need or reasonably desire, and they would be equal with everybody else with respect to obtaining scarce things that are equitably rationed according to need.

Lots of people would love to be physicians in this kind of society, and in this kind of society resources would be provided to educate and train lots of physicians. Resources would not be used, as today, to kill millions of people with a military that is used to keep the rich haves in power over the have-nots of the world. Nor would resources be used to provide obscene luxuries for a billionaire class (there would not be a billionaire class). There would be as many primary care physicians as needed to have a truly good health care system.

But what is a good health care system?

Furthermore, the real power in an egalitarian society would be ordinary people who want science and medicine to be based on helping people stay (or get) healthy, NOT on making big profits for Big Pharma. Unlike today, when people have good reason NOT to trust medical authorities because Big $ controls the science and medical research agenda, people in an egalitarian society would have good reason to trust physicians and scientists because they would be responsible to ordinary people (egalitarians) who control the resources of society.

For good health we need to remove the rich from power. Here’s how to start.